Where Does the Worldcon's Money Go?
Jul. 22nd, 2006 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeWith the minor storm over L.A.con IV deciding that spending more than $30,000 to provide wi-fi service to their members was not a good use of the convention's resources (I agree), there has been some discussion of what a Worldcon spends its money on. There are some (IMO uniformed) people out there who have a hard time thinking that a Worldcon is spending money on anything because so much of what the convention must do is either invisible or taken for granted. So I dug through my files and did a rough breakdown of ConJose's income and expense by major category. I had to fiddle around quite a bit because the budget was arranged by division, but the expenses that get people excited are not necessarily neatly arranged. That's why there are several "other" categories and a miscellaneous into which a lot of small items from throughout the convention were rolled. If you really want to know this at a fine level of detail, e-mail me and I'll send you the line-item budget.
Another adjustment I made was to show only the net Art Show income (after paying the artists), rather than the gross. (ConJose's records showed the gross sales as income -- needed for sales-tax reporting -- and the payments to artists as a convention operating expense. I consider it misleading to show 15% of the convention's revenue that way because it's sequestered -- everything except the convention's commission goes to the artists.
So first we have how the convention's approximately $850,000 in revenue (net of art show; it was nearly $1 Million with that included) came to us. (I expect you'll need to click on the small graphics to get them large enough to read.)
As you can see, convention memberships are pretty much what keeps the con afloat. The other revenue is important, of course, but it's memberships that drive the convention.
Now, how did we spend that money? Since these reports are prepared four years after the convention and nearly a year after ConJose's Final Report to WSFS, they include all of the convention's revenue. ConJose has spent all of the money it took in. The total expenses, like the total revenue, were approximately $850,000. (I'd rather not introduce spurious precision here by quoting it to the penny, particularly because trying to aggregate reports like this across multiple years' reports means that there will be minor inconsistencies, but they are on the order of <0.5%.)
If you look at this, vast swaths of expenses are things like renting the convention center and paying the decorator (that's the tables and chairs and other furniture inside the convention center -- it ain't free, folks), or are things that are considered "entitlements" -- the post-con reimbursements. Things that get people so excited, like the Con Suite or Tech Services (shown separately from the Event-specific costs because ConJose had Tech Services in a different division than Events; that is, no one Event was charged the fixed cost of obtaining the tech kit any more than Programming wasn't charged the cost of renting the function rooms or Exhibits the cost of the Exhibit Halls; therefore, Events overall looks inexpensive.)
"Member Services" includes costs of Registration, Childcare, Scooters, and a number of smaller items. "Administration Other" includes the cost of renting office space for the two years leading up to and immediately after the convention.
Also note that Hugo Awards looks a little high, but that's because it was charged not only the direct cost of the trophies and plaques (about $5,600) but also costs associated with printing and mailing the Nominating ballot (mailed separately from a PR) and also of sending 2003 Nominating Ballots to all of ConJose's members to remind them that they were eligible to nominate.
Again, anyone who wants the fine details behind these numbers should write to me directly and I will send you the latest and I think last version (revision 50) of the ConJose budget, which shows every line item on which we received or spent money.
This message is posted as public. If you want to send it on to someone else or point people at it, I don't care, and you don't need to ask my permission to do so.
Edit, 10:45: Based on a comment, added explanation that expenses were also $850,000, the same as revenue.
Edit, 11:30: Modified the pie charts so that the charts themselves and their ScrapBook Gallery descriptions include the gross amount of approximately $850,000.
Another adjustment I made was to show only the net Art Show income (after paying the artists), rather than the gross. (ConJose's records showed the gross sales as income -- needed for sales-tax reporting -- and the payments to artists as a convention operating expense. I consider it misleading to show 15% of the convention's revenue that way because it's sequestered -- everything except the convention's commission goes to the artists.
So first we have how the convention's approximately $850,000 in revenue (net of art show; it was nearly $1 Million with that included) came to us. (I expect you'll need to click on the small graphics to get them large enough to read.)
As you can see, convention memberships are pretty much what keeps the con afloat. The other revenue is important, of course, but it's memberships that drive the convention.
Now, how did we spend that money? Since these reports are prepared four years after the convention and nearly a year after ConJose's Final Report to WSFS, they include all of the convention's revenue. ConJose has spent all of the money it took in. The total expenses, like the total revenue, were approximately $850,000. (I'd rather not introduce spurious precision here by quoting it to the penny, particularly because trying to aggregate reports like this across multiple years' reports means that there will be minor inconsistencies, but they are on the order of <0.5%.)
If you look at this, vast swaths of expenses are things like renting the convention center and paying the decorator (that's the tables and chairs and other furniture inside the convention center -- it ain't free, folks), or are things that are considered "entitlements" -- the post-con reimbursements. Things that get people so excited, like the Con Suite or Tech Services (shown separately from the Event-specific costs because ConJose had Tech Services in a different division than Events; that is, no one Event was charged the fixed cost of obtaining the tech kit any more than Programming wasn't charged the cost of renting the function rooms or Exhibits the cost of the Exhibit Halls; therefore, Events overall looks inexpensive.)
"Member Services" includes costs of Registration, Childcare, Scooters, and a number of smaller items. "Administration Other" includes the cost of renting office space for the two years leading up to and immediately after the convention.
Also note that Hugo Awards looks a little high, but that's because it was charged not only the direct cost of the trophies and plaques (about $5,600) but also costs associated with printing and mailing the Nominating ballot (mailed separately from a PR) and also of sending 2003 Nominating Ballots to all of ConJose's members to remind them that they were eligible to nominate.
Again, anyone who wants the fine details behind these numbers should write to me directly and I will send you the latest and I think last version (revision 50) of the ConJose budget, which shows every line item on which we received or spent money.
This message is posted as public. If you want to send it on to someone else or point people at it, I don't care, and you don't need to ask my permission to do so.
Edit, 10:45: Based on a comment, added explanation that expenses were also $850,000, the same as revenue.
Edit, 11:30: Modified the pie charts so that the charts themselves and their ScrapBook Gallery descriptions include the gross amount of approximately $850,000.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-23 07:54 am (UTC)We tried hard to make the Events publications at Interaction self-financing, but of course they wouldn't have been anywhere near so if I'd charged for the hours I spent on the phone and writing emails beating my head against a brick wall. The UK publishers were particularly difficult - while the editors were mostly very keen, the corporate PR people didn't think that Worldcon or the Hugos had any relevance to them. Those of them that had actually heard of the Hugos seemed convinced that the awards were only for American books/authors.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-23 02:29 pm (UTC)We know that the Google ad words did just fine by us...we could follow the trail of those who clicked through (because we used one of our domains for the ad words link that was not publicized or referred to anywhere else -- the wonder of multiple domains).
It is more difficult to gauge the effectiveness of the radio ads, but it's clear that they brought in some people from the local area. I wish we'd done more tracking.
One of the most effective of our marketing expenditures was a direct mailing we made to a pretty extensive list (gleaned from NESFA, Arisia, and previous Worldcon mailing lists, then whittled down to New England, New York, etc.) of those we knew were interested in SF conventions. That, coupled with Geri Sullivan's beautiful color flyer did get us some obvious results ('cuz we could see some returned via mail, and we blipped right after they started hitting mailboxes).
I wish we'd had the staff to do more blanketing of bookstores and libraries in the area with our flyers, however.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-23 04:41 pm (UTC)As to getting staff to blanket libraries and bookstores, it is kind of hard when people think "marketing" is a dirty word. Dave Stewart had a terrible time trying to get people to distribute fliers for Interaction.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-23 09:14 pm (UTC)For us, it was more a case of identifying people who could do this occasionally and getting a good geographic spread. We had two people who were responsible for shipping flyers to cons, and they did a very, very good job. But getting people to coordinate walking into libraries, etc., is tougher -- particularly in a spread-out geographical area.
It might be worth having a "paper day" where we turn it into a social occasion. Everybody gets a stack of flyers and a set of locations, then we meet for lunch afterward. Making the mundane fun makes people want to do it. :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-24 09:00 am (UTC)One of the greatest difficulties of marketing a UK Worldcon is that the vast majority of your attendees are not local. The geographic spread you need to market to is the whole of the UK.